Guest post by Lee Harp:
I am 70 yrs old and retired from the railroad industry. My retirement accts. Have devastated the last 3 yrs leaving me with basically Social Security. I am going to start looking for a job to supplement it. I would like to give my opinion on what the country needs to do to get out of this quagmire.
The attacks on 9/11/2001 was a much larger shock to our economy than anything since unless you want to try and make an argument that the housing was worse for our nation than 9/11. We have got to stop this class warfare. That is what Hitler did to gain control of Germany. He picked the highest achievers, a minority of the citizens and convinced the masses that they would be better off if he would get rid of them and give him control of their assets. The easiest way to get the support of the uninformed and illiterate is to convince them that you are going to take money from someone else and buy them something with it. I am not suggesting that our politicians would commit a holocaust, but I do think some of them would be willing to tax all the wealthy people except the ruling class and the ones that agree with them into poverty. What easier way to prove to your constituent that you only care for them. We need some achievers to offset the ones that don’t care about anything but getting on the dole.
(1) We should figure out what is truly poverty, not just lower middle class. Everyone not in true poverty should have a dog in the hunt. It is easy to get a pole showing that a majority is for raising taxes if you are to raise taxes on someone else (the minority). People not in poverty but with low incomes would have to pay their percentage. The government should strive to treat all citizens equal and important as a supporter of the country and not use the tax code to buy votes. Families with two professionals working hard and have three or four kids, saving for education, retirement, contributing to charities and making $500,000 are not rich in most parts of the country, but upper middle class. Everyone should pay the same percentage rate on all income from poverty to $1,000,000 and a 10% higher rate for income over $1,000,000. We have to leave room for people to have incentives to do their best if we plan to work our way out of this hole.
(2) Slowly change exemptions leaving time for people to adjust their planning. Do away with most tax breaks except for Social Security Taxes, IRA’s, 401-K’s, contributions to charities for humanitarian purposes such as food banks, homeless shelters, orphanages and homes for children that do not have anyone to take care of them. Homes for the very elderly that do not have help, medical care facilities that operate as non-profit, etc. Employees of these charities that are on paid positions should be paid decent salaries but not excessive high salaries and a small % for promotions so that the public can trust where there money is going. These exemptions can take a lot of pressure off of government spending.
(3) Corporate taxes should be kept very low and all business should get the same breaks. Consumers pay these taxes and it is another way for the government to hide from the citizens the amount of taxes they pay. This would also give business some incentive not to move off shore.
(4) Politicians have proven that they cannot be trusted to control spending if it will interfere with them keeping power or prevents them from promoting their ideology. The only way we can put the brakes on them is to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that limits spending cap 20% to start with and a super majority to change it or raise taxes. The Treasury could start a fund for people that thought they had not paid enough taxes to contribute to. All government employees should be on Social Security and 401-K’s including all politicians. The citizenry need to be able to think that government employees are patriots instead of a bunch of people looking for a gravy train, getting rich, or acquiring power and boosting their ego’s.
For the sake of brevity I will close with this. If politicians don’t stop trying to do away with incentives for people to work hard and add value to their assets and savings we will end up like the Soviet Union did and this could possibly lead to the disbanding of the UNITED STATES, the country that has the envy of the rest of the world.
==
This guest post was submitted in response to my query about how the best way to deal with the current economic situation. This post does not necessarily reflect my thoughts and feelings.
Your comments and reactions are, of course, appreciated. Just play nice. I have standards. And I don’t want to have to delete you.